Self-Portrait

By the summer of 1887 Van Gogh had been in Paris for about a year, living with his brother Theo and watching the Impressionists break paint into bright, separate strokes. You can see him trying that here, in the flecks of blue and orange worked across the jacket and face. He wears the blue smock he actually painted in, so this is Van Gogh at his easel looking hard at Van Gogh. He made more than twenty self-portraits in these Paris years, in large part because a model was an expense he could not manage and his own face was free. He was sparing with the canvas as well. Turn this panel over and you find a darker study of a peasant's head, painted two years earlier in the Netherlands for The Potato Eaters.